Vitamins Category

When we are run down, stressed or actually sick, our bodies burn through vitamin C at an alarming rate. Once your vitamin C levels drop, your immune system becomes more compromised which could lead to other health issues.

This explains why we are able to tolerate much larger than normal doses of vitamin C than we would normally require when we have a cold or flu or other infections.

Interestingly, in healthy people who regularly consume vegetable and some fruits and/or supplement with vitamin C, recommended vitamin C levels are around 70 micromoles per liter yet these levels drop precipitously when we have a health problem. For examples these levels drop to:

The recommended daily allowance (RDA) of vitamin C at 90 mg. is enough to prevent scurvy, a vitamin C deficiency but woefully too low to provide optimal levels of this vitamin.

I recommend 500-1000 mg/day of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) which is 5-11 times the recommended RDA. Regular, inexpensive ascorbic acid is all that is necessary and don’t get caught up in all of the advertising hype about fancy and much more expensive forms of vitamin C being better or more bioavailable.

Vitamin C is protective on so many levels. In addition to strongly supporting immune function, other proven benefits are:

7- Powerful antioxidant that also protects and restores other antioxidants

8- Protects connective tissue, bones, arteries and skin

9- Crucially beneficial to wound healing

10- May reduce the duration and severity of the common cold and in higher doses may reduce flu symptoms

Vitamin C is one of the most important supplements to include in your diet to keep your body functioning properly. Whether you eat lots of fruits and vegetables or take it in caplet or powdered form, make sure to get at least 500-1,000 mg. double that if you are a smoker or drinker and don’t be afraid to really increase your intake when you are sick.

I am hard pressed to name a single vitamin that has consistently shown to be able to decrease all-cause mortality as well as cardiovascular and cancer mortality as Vitamin D-3 (cholecalciferol). The studies depicting these benefits continue to accrue.

At this point in time, I recommend that everyone supplement at least 2000-5000 IU per day of vitamin D-3, with the goal being that when you have your physiciancheck your vitamin D levels after a few months of supplementation, they be in the 40-60 ng/ml range.

If they are not in this range, double the amount of vitamin D you’re taking daily and have your levels checked again in 4-5 months. Some people, even with additional daily D-3 supplementation, do not easily increase their vitamin D-3 levels. If upon having them tested the second time, your levels did not increase very much (despite having doubled your daily dose), discuss this with your doctor.

Discuss this with your physician and you may have to take as much as 50,000 IU of vitamin D-3 a day (or more) to get up to 40-60 ng/ml. I know that going to your doctor’s office or a lab can be inconvenient but it is so worth it to decrease your risk of death from all causes as well as specifically from heart disease and cancer!

Here’s a brief summary of just two of the several studies that reported these vitamin D-3 benefits. 1.) Published in the prestigious British Medical Journal, 2014, Jun 17, a meta-analysis (a study that compiles and evaluates the reported data from multiple studies on a given topic) of both European and U.S. published studies found that: 0f the 26,000 participants (age 50-79) reported on, in all of the included studies, those who had the lowest vitamin D levels had a RR (relative risk) of 1.57 (an RR of 1 is neutral) for both all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality and a similar RR for cancer related mortality in those who previously had cancer. 2.) A second study published in April, 2013 in the American Journal Of Clinical Nutrition also reported decreasing vitamin D levels were inversely related to all-cause, cardiovascular, cancer and respiratory mortality rates.

Links to abstracts of these studies are below. For those of you who are interested, vitamin D levels can be reported as ng/ml (which is the denomination we referred to above) or nanomoles/Litre. To convert ng/ml into nmoles/liter multiply the ng/ml by 2.5. Vitamin D-3 in 5000 iu soft gels is relatively inexpensive and all of you reading this article should strongly consider supplementing this powerfully healthy vitamin today.

* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Individual results may vary and testimonials listed on this website are not intended to be a guarantee.